A Knight's Vow (26 page)

The striped tent was owned by a clothier and his wife and,
clearly against Alyson’s arrival, they had set out several
gowns on their long polished trestle table for her to consider.

“Take any or all,” Guillelm instructed in a low voice. “Do
not worry about payment”

Alyson ran a finger over the fur collar of a winter gown.
“These are my size,” she murmured, and looked closely at her
husband, paring his fingernails with a knife. “I have missed
my perse-colored gown these past few days,” she remarked.

He shrugged. “After your … skirmish with the archer, that
dress was nothing but rags. I took it away.”

“To give to these good people as a template?” Alyson
asked softly. She tugged on Guillelm’s sleeve, made him duck
his head as she hissed into his ear, “Have you had these poor
folk laboring with their needles all night?”

“Hardly!” Guillelm answered at once. “They have been
here two days and, if you must know, I gave them your gown
when they arrived.” He bent his lips to her ear. “If the clothier’s wife looks a trifle red about the eyes, it may be because
last night she and her man were drinking in the great hall till
the early hours. You heard nothing of that feast because you
were already snoring when I carried you to our chamber.”

“You cannot silence me by embarrassment, my lord.”

“No, but I can make you blush,” said Guillelm, releasing
her with a gentle tweak of her sleeve. “What do you think of
the scarlet dress? Or that one in white and gold? Or the green
and yellow?”

Alyson had never bought clothes before-nor did she now,
she thought wryly, for Guillelm insisted on paying for a whole
trunkload of gowns, undershifts, veils, ribbons and cloaks.
When she laughingly protested at the cost, Guillelm countered, “How can you grant me favors at the forthcoming jousts
and wrestling matches, if you have no fresh combs? How can
you meet your friend Petronilla, or Lady Edith, if you have no
new gowns? How is your shoulder?” he added slyly.

She burst out laughing. “You ask me how I am, after such
bounty? A joust here? Dragon, you give me so much” In truth,
the idea of a joust alarmed her, though she knew it to be a true
manly sport, but to know that Guillelm had taken the trouble
to find her oldest friends, to invite them here to Hardspen,
when Lord Robert had driven Edith’s messengers away—

Suddenly she was weeping into her hands, overwhelmed.
“Forgive me,” she managed to whisper from her closing throat and then she was conscious of being bundled, gently but firmly,
out of the tent. Although the day was warm, Guillelm swept
his cloak around both of them, shielding her from curious faces.

“Now what is it, sweet?” he asked, scooping a tendril of
hair away from her eyes.

“Nothing! But to see my friends again, after so many seasons … and a joust here … Men die in such things.” Alyson
gulped, aware she was making little sense. She wanted to beg
him to take care but was afraid he might be offended, think
her interfering. She took another deep breath and tried again.
“My shoulder is healing well, thank you, my lord.”

“So, we are full of the Eastern courtesies I told you of, are
we? I think I prefer a more English informality.” Guillelm
wrapped the ends of his cloak more tightly about her narrow
shoulders, pulling her closer. “Like this.”

“People will see!” Alyson exclaimed, at once scandalized
and delighted.

“Indeed,” Guillelm said gruffly, ashamed as he misinterpreted her moment of freezing delight as fear. Their meeting,
which had begun so excellently, seemed to be going from bad
to worse. “Please forgive my action. It was foolish.”

Although he was a head taller than her and broader, Alyson
felt herself relax. Lord Robert would never have admitted anything he did or said was foolish. She touched his arm, brushing a rose petal, fallen from their roof garden, off his shoulder.
Against the backdrop of the keep, his starkly handsome face
and bright hair lent him an unworldly air, like a fallen angel.

“There is nothing to forgive,” she said softly.

He bowed his head toward her and they stood together in
quiet, Alyson aware of his light, slow breathing, Guillelm lost
in the moment entirely. Out of the shadows, from an unseen
booth, drifted the mellow, haunting sound of a rebec: someone playing a lament. People strolling about the bailey paused to
listen, their figures as insubstantial to Alyson’s dazzled senses
as the smoke from a distant fire.

“Are you real?” Guillelm murmured. “Is this a dream?” The
sound of the rebec wound about them as he lifted her hand and
kissed her palm, her fingertips. He ran his thumb lightly down
her arm. “You are so pretty.”

“No

“Yes, you are.” He drew her back into his arms. Alyson
leaned against his shoulder. When she threaded her arm
around him, he sighed.

“Do you know the tune being played?” he asked. “It sounds
very old, very beautiful.”

“Sorry, no ””

“Do not be, sweet. There is no need to know.” He rocked
her lightly, in time to the slow rise and fall of the music.
“Only remember.”

His eyes held hers. “Alyson?”

She smiled, knowing why he had stopped, why he was so
suddenly tense. It really was her move. “All is well,” she said,
and she took his face gently between her hands and kissed
him on his mouth.

Guillelm spent the rest of the day in a happy fog, though he
could have strangled the page who had interrupted his deepening embrace with Alyson to say that the first of the knights had
arrived. It was no one he knew, a younger son of one of the local
landowners, keen to better his fortune through keeping the horse
and weapons of those knights he vanquished. There would be
many younger sons arriving, Guillelm thought, and knights
weary of fighting for King Stephen or the empress and looking for easier spoils. He had warned his men to look out for any troublemakers he wanted no battles to erupt at Hardspen
between the factions of Stephen or Maud.

Soon after he had greeted the gangly, young knight who
had ridden in on an old chestnut horse, a wagon of womenfolk arrived, escorted by stripling archers and a dozen sturdy,
experienced retainers. Alyson, who had stood patiently beside
him while the acne-scarred knight had nervously recited the
names of his kindred and promised his obedience to the lord
and lady of Hardspen, gasped and drew back.

“Petronilla,” she moaned, as if in despair, rather than gladness. “How very elegant she is!”

Guillelm saw a pale, moon-faced woman with sparse
blonde hair leaning from the front of the wagon, waving. To
him, her white features and dress were as insipid as milk,
but Alyson was flicking hopelessly at her own gown as if it
was spattered with dust.

“I have no time to change,” she was saying.

Guillelm turned his laughter into a cough and shook his
head. “I will bring your Petronilla and her ladies to your paradise-after you have changed”

Alyson laced herself swiftly into her new scarlet gown
she knew red was Guillelm’s favorite color-and ran up the
long spirals to the roof garden. She had scarcely recovered
her breath when Guillelm appeared, escorting Petronilla.

“My dear creature, how brown you are!” Petronilla exclaimed the instant Guillelm disappeared downstairs. “You
are almost as dark-skinned as your lord, who is as tanned as
one of my father’s peasants”

Two light kisses landed somewhere in midair close to
Alyson’s ears as Petronilla swept about the garden, leaving a
trail of snapped-off flower heads where the long sleeves of
her gown had caught against the sides of the tubs and a sweet, rather sickly scent of violets. Gaping at her friend, whom she
had not seen for two years, Alyson realized she had forgotten
how talkative Petronilla was.

“Not that Lord Guillelm is anything like a peasant,” Petronilla went on, dropping her pet squirrel onto Alyson’s couch
and frowning at the simple wooden cups that had been left on
the low table. “I suppose that his blond looks are quite handsome, if you like the brooding sort. It is a shame he is so big.
No large man is ever graceful and his bones will pain him and
grow crooked before he is much older.”

“Not if I can help it, Pet,” Alyson answered mildly.

“Do not call me that name! So childish.” Petronilla stepped
back from the battlements with a shudder. “I told my women
to be careful with that, and now it is quite spoilt,” she remarked coolly, referring to some calamity Alyson had not
seen. “Edith would say he is almost a fashionable knight, your
Guillelm: his color is right but not his size-much too lumbering! Edith sends her apologies, by the by. She cannot come
because of a stomach chill.”

“I am sorry for that,” Alyson replied, her mood sinking further. She had forgotten how Edith’s easygoing charm had
smoothed relations between them all. Without Edith she was
finding Petronilla a trial. “How are you, Petronilla?”

“I have a mark on my hand that I hope you will take a
look at °”

“Of course”

“And the skin around my elbows looks dry.”

“I have a salve that may help you there. Shall we go down
to my potions room?”

Petronilla beamed. “You can meet my maids, too, and see
my wagon. Father had it made for me specially, with extra
cushions; you know how easily I bruise! More than Edith, although she is a redhead. No dashing bachelor will look at her now she is three-and-twenty; she will have to settle for a
widower, or a man like your Guillelm.”

“Then Edith will consider herself fortunate,” Alyson
replied, considering this brittle-tongued, wispy woman and
recalling the chattering, golden child she had been, beloved
and protected by everyone. Petronilla had always been so glad
to try her salves, too.

That interest between them at least remained, Alyson
thought, leading the way as Petronilla seized the leather lead
of her squirrel and dragged the squirming creature off the
bed. “How are your parents?” Alyson asked above the squirrel’s squeals of fear and indignation.

“Father is looking for a good marriage for me. He has been
approached by several knights, but none have really caught
my eye and he knows that. Mother says that with my beauty
and wealth I can take my time. We heard about the attack on
St. Foy’s, by the by. Someone told me that your sister is staying here. Are you not afraid that your bear of a husband will
alarm her? She was always mistrustful of men”

“My sister is a deeply religious person. She spends her day
in the chapel, in prayer and contemplation,” Alyson answered
doggedly, depressed that Petronilla had learned about Sister
Ursula so quickly. “The nuns are devastated about the loss
of their home. Guillelm tells me that the prioress is shocked
beyond measure that their convent should have been attacked.
She and the nuns rarely venture from the chapel.”

“Even so, Matilda is your sister-“

“With her sisters in Christ in such a wretched state, Tilda
cannot leave them” Alyson took a deep breath. “Forgive me,
Petronilla, my sister is of course Sister Ursula now. She has a
different name and a different life.”

Alyson felt Petronilla’s hand drop onto her injured shoulder
and bit her lip hard to stop herself from crying out. She turned
on the narrow staircase, trying not to flinch or show her distaste as she stared straight into the young woman’s delicate face and
hard, narrow eyes, glinting with curiosity.

“Do you not miss her?”

Alyson nodded, hoping that would be enough. She heard
Petronilla take in another breath and braced herself for more
painful questions.

“I see you have not grown as much as a finger-width, by
the by,” Petronilla exulted, touching the crown of her head
as if in comparison, her fingers idly checking that her jeweled
fillet was perfectly arranged on her yellow curls. “You are
quite as small as a cottar’s child.”

“I know I do not match the fashionable forms of beauty,
any more than does my lord,” Alyson replied, in what she
prayed was a good-humored way. She turned and resumed her
downward climb, quickening her pace so that she and Petronilla soon would be joining others.

“Perhaps you could cover your hair,” Petronilla trilled happily, tripping on the steps behind Alyson, her breath hot on
Alyson’s aching shoulder. “And never wear a drop-waisted
gown or belt; that would draw attention to your short legs.
Hush!” This said to the squirrel, scrabbling on the leash by
her feet.

“What do you call the creature?” Alyson asked.

“Mother said it had a name; she gave it to me as a contrast
to my coloring. Perhaps you should have a pet.”

“I do not know if my lord would allow that,” Alyson replied
in mock-seriousness, breathing a sigh of relief as she stepped
out of the keep and Petronilla was surrounded by her ladiesin-waiting.

Alyson found supper in the great hall that evening a trial,
after a long afternoon spent with Petronilla and her maids
happily burrowing through her stores of potions and salves, trying at will what they fancied. It was the first time she had
dined in public since her injury and she had hoped to be
seated by Guillelm, but he, Fulk and Sir Tom were absent,
still at the tourney ground seeing to last-minute preparations
for the jousting that would begin on the morrow.

Sitting in Guillelm’s place, Alyson knew she should be the
gracious hostess. There were a score or more of young
knights and their squires, all strangers to Hardspen, who had
arrived throughout the day, lured by the promises of winning
renown and rich prizes. Seated among Guillelm’s veterans,
the new men nervously picked at their trenchers or were
drinking deeply, with a grinning bravado.

Aware of Petronilla on her left, scarcely touching her meat,
Alyson was increasingly mortified as the meal progressed.
Hardspen had no resident minstrels, for Lord Robert had disliked music and neither she nor Guillelm had yet had the time
to appoint any players. They were “entertained” by several
traveling musicians who had arrived for the jousts and who,
despite Alyson’s and Sericus’s best efforts, frequently beat
their drums or blew their whistles in opposition to each other.